


Sparkling Blues

by HogwartsToAlexandria



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: AU - No ZA, AU - Soulmate Universe, Angst-free fluff, Birthmarks, Dreams, First Meetings, I went the Soulmate route, M/M, Prompted Gift, RWG Secret Santa 2018, Tags to be added, so here goes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-11
Updated: 2018-12-28
Packaged: 2019-09-16 13:06:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16954605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HogwartsToAlexandria/pseuds/HogwartsToAlexandria
Summary: "No matter how diligently the little boy or girl you were held onto the idea of a perfect match somewhere out there, no matter how thoroughly that same child might have pictured their significant other, believing in soulmates as an adult came to be as common as believing in fairies and witches.Only, after mankind spent a few decades hard at work to forget any belief in soulmates, burying this so essentially human hope of being born to meet their other halves so that one would never be left alone was rendered more difficult by the appearance of strange marks."





	1. Daryl

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PixieReedus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PixieReedus/gifts).



> Merry Christmas Pixie!  
> So...I know you wanted a one-shot but I hope you'll forgive me, this piece wanted two chapters and an epilogue or so it seems as I write this note. If you'd prefer I write something else for your gift, do tell me :-)  
> Also- the smut shall come, just as prompted, it's just taking its time....  
> Hope you enjoy!

For a long long time, soulmates remained a matter of legends, the substance of myths, the weight of a grandmother's stories to her young audience.

If you happened to believe they existed as a child, it wasn't presumptuous to think this belief would vanish come adulthood and responsibility.

No matter how diligently the little boy or girl you were held onto the idea of a perfect match somewhere out there, no matter how thoroughly that same child might have pictured their significant other, believing in soulmates as an adult came to be as common as believing in fairies and witches.

Only, after mankind spent a few decades hard at work to forget any belief in soulmates, burying this so essentially human hope of being born to meet their other halves so that one would never be left alone was rendered more difficult by the appearance of strange marks.

Children were born with unexplainable shapes marking their skin ever so faintly, so faintly indeed that some almost looked like scars. Their patterns varied. Their placement varied, too. After a while, doctors stopped trying to find rational reasonings for their being there and nothing was said of them for some time. The time it took for these same marks to shift, ever so slightly, through years and years of life until their bearers were old enough to live through the first amorous flutters of their hearts, until they were old enough to fathom themselves as part of a pair who would found a family, a household, a life together.

Until that very moment where the first children turned-adults saw their marks redefining themselves over their skin, reshaping, from their pale pink to reddened lines forming the name of the person who fate, and somehow cosmic matches, had designed to be their beloved. 

Only then, did people, did _ mankind _ , start to grasp the meaning, the reason, behind the appearance of the marks. As time passed, voices were heard, claiming babies were born marked by the seal of fate, that human beings would never get lost again as they were in fact born with a compass ever-leading them towards promised happiness. 

The first reactions of the old generations went to calling it all nonsense, madness, a new religion among all the other existing ones. They looked for other, medical, environmental reasons. But the fact remained, these marks did shift to form into a name, a varying one for each new life born and met with their matching soul and the more time moved forward, the more reluctance died away to let people embrace the fact that soulmates were in fact real. 

Daryl Dixon happened to be born in these times of acceptance and hopefulness, of renewed optimism among men. Only, these joyful feelings never really reached the end of the Georgian woods he found himself living in. 

The rare occurrences of soulmates finding each other in his corner of the world were quickly muffled by shouts of drunken men and the sound of breaking glass, all consequently forgotten in alcoholic slumber. 

The more Daryl grew into an adult, the more the stories he heard from his mother became little less than a distant memory, tainted with the shades and hues of dreamt pictures - her death only the beginning of a long list of events that took away his boyish fantasies, his childhood, his idealist cheerfulness. The fire that took the Dixon cabin, took the warmth of real love as well. 

Soulmates birthmarks? Will Dixon, forever drunk could only barely see past the neck of his beer bottles, let alone see the fading mark of his wife’s name on the side of his right calf. Merle Dixon, forever angry wasn’t ever interested enough in himself to try and find happiness other than the pretend elation drugs could bring him and then again, his skin only ever showed the numerous prison tattoos it was littered with. 

Knowing all that, living through it, Daryl never gave much mind to the stories that seemed so far away now, love wasn’t really on the menu for him and he didn’t seek it either. The man had grown up learning that the less he payed attention to others, the less he wanted things for himself, the greater his chances of going unnoticed grew and therefore, he could hope for peace, uneventfulness. 

Because everyone was born with a birthmark of their own, Daryl did have one, only, the paleness of it could easily be confused for one more cigarette burn combined with another belt lash that would have reached his left inner forearm and that’s what he did, never looking for another explanation for the odd placement of this particular mark.

Daryl went about his life with his head bowed, with very realistic, very low expectations. He carried himself from place to place, home - a cabin in the woods he’d lived in since his shit of a father had died, to work - a rather decent garage he almost liked, and again, every day.

Nightmares were another thing he lived through, dispassionately. He'd had them forever and didn't expect them to ever stop. If he did wake from them, sweaty and panting, he just turned his pillow and comforter the humid side away and closed his eyes again. Most nights were a repeat of that. 

Dreams. He may have had some when he was young but that was a long time ago. He was too beat up to daydream anymore and even the last shred of a hope for more he may have held hardly ever filtered through the dark images of nightmares to let him have some actual, peaceful dreams. 

A blurry face and a blurry body. Shifting shapes forming into something barely resembling a man. 

A buzz, a series of ungraspable notes, neither pleasant nor exceptionally remarkable in their undefined waves. A voice it seemed. 

Hard white wood for a frame, fuzzy diffuse greens for a background. A peaceful setting that oddly resembled his house even there, even as a barely drawn sketch.

That had been the first dream, a cloudlike image dancing in his mind as he rolled over and over in his bed and eventually woke up with a foreign smile on his face, confusion pooling in his eyes and a gentle warmth spreading through his left forearm. Daryl had rubbed at his eyes and arm sleepily, unthinking, and fell back asleep mere seconds after the whole affair.

Waking up for real that morning, nothing remained of the dream but that tingling sensation up his forearm and Daryl hadn't paid attention to it. For once in his life, he was late for work.

The second his eyes opened the man knew. The sun was too high in the sky and the noises reaching his ears weren't the usual bird chirpings and wind blowings, they were a concert of cars honking and breaking suddenly, so loud as they happened that they went through the woods and down Daryl's ears. All too noisy for his usual 6.30. Noisy enough for it to be 8. And it was. 

He'd got up and literally put his head in the sink, opening the tap and letting the water pouring over his face and hair. That had been his shower. He'd put on his clothes and knotted his hair in a high, hurried bun, had taken hold of his bike keys and helmet and closed his door without a look back.

Getting on his bike and rushing through traffic to get to the garage took all of twenty minutes. He parked hastily and walked in long strides to the coffee shop right next to Dale's. He was so deep in thoughts and cursing himself for not waking up on time that he bumped into someone and only barely threw them a glance and an apology, his palm going to his forearm instinctively as it flamed up again, much more intensely than it had before. And still, Daryl grabbed his coffee from the barista and went on to work without a question in his mind. 

The day passed slowly. Daryl’s efficiency in the repairs he had to do earning him a lot of waiting around for new jobs to come. A few times he caught himself looking far away and at nothing in particular, the greys and fluorescent yellows of the garage fading to turn into shades of green and without reason it seemed, blue, a pale hypnotizing blue. And then a car came in, and he was busy again.

The dream kept coming back to him, coloring his slumber in that same sparkling blue and, as it gained definition, seeping into his conscious mind more and more. 

Soon, Daryl started remembering his dream, getting a sense of the fact that it was repeating itself over and over, the ache in his arm not leaving him either. 

His vision would unfocus and the face he was only beginning to see, of a man that smiled large and bright and looked at him with a single-mindedness that Daryl felt all over, that vision started overlapping that of the actual objects he was seeing every day. There was no escaping it, no dodging it, no forgetting it. And maybe, even if he didn't admit it, even if he didn't commit to it, Daryl liked this unnamed man keeping him company as the days went by. 

Days turned into weeks and still, the man inhabited his dreams, night after night, no matter what time he went to bed nor what time he got out of it, he was still there, smiling gently and talking an undecipherable series of words, just a voice. Every night. 

He came to be almost familiar to Daryl, someone he felt like he knew and yet he didn't even know his name. All he knew was the pull inside of him that got stronger and stronger, that filled his lungs and revived his heart, the same heart that had paused so long ago. The man with the wavy curls and the clothes that had shifted over the nights to form into a cop's uniform, no less, that man, was something Daryl thought about during the day, first thing in the morning as the memory of the dream still seemed so real and last thing as he laid down into his bed, thinking he was about to see him again. 

Work was a weird place to be at these days, with how distracted he found himself so it was no wonder that Daryl felt nothing but relief, instead of his usual restlessness, when the time came for him to have a few days off. 

For once, the man slept the morning off and only got out of bed when the sun, blaring outside, was too insistently prying his eyes open. He showered for longer than he had indulged in for ages and took the most massive breakfast he'd ever had it seemed. His hair was still wet as he piled it up the top of his head in a ridiculous thing, halfway between a ponytail and a bun before he scratched at his arm in a motion he'd grown accustomed to over the weeks without questioning it still. 

The doorbell rang just as he was finished with the dishes and he frowned. No one ever visited. Never. Confused, Daryl trudged to the door, opening it a crack before letting it fall open completely.

“ _ No way _ .”


	2. Rick

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What about Rick's side of things?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Second chapter, still for you Pixie! Hope you like it and Happy Holidays!

Waking up in the morning had come to be Rick's favorite moment of the day. He who had always been a rather heavy sleeper, who'd only ever got out of bed begrudgingly, had grown incredibly fond of mornings in the last few weeks. A lifetime of scowling at his alarm clock, and a pair of sea-water blue eyes slowly printing itself on the inside of his eyelids was all it took to smooth his brow and paint a smile on his face instead.

If the police officer he was had thought the slight but persistent soreness he felt around his right collarbone might be due to a bad movement during training or getting out of his patrol car, when he started remembering his dream, Rick knew.

He knew he was beginning to experience his soulmate wave and nothing could make him happier.

For as long as he could remember, Rick Grimes had known about the existence of soulmates and everything revolving around them, the bonds, the dynamics, the history, and he had waited, waited for his own half to turn up in his life.

As a child, Rick had stared at his soul mark for hours. When he’d first been told about it, he'd looked for it everywhere on his body, his parents watching him with amused looks all the while, for they knew where it was and had known for as long as the little boy had lived. He'd found it eventually, a pale knot of rose lines on his right collarbone, going over the bone and just slightly down the dip of it. He'd traced it with his fingers, eyes and smile brighter than they had ever been.

He was to be part of a pair that would never detach.

He was to find his match in life and in everything that constitutes a living.

He was to be able to cherish and care for and love another human being without anyone being able to do anything about it but accept it. Another warm body of flesh to hug and kiss and tell stories to, tell everything to.

Rick couldn't wait. But he had had to and when his dream started clearing itself enough for his conscious mind to grasp some pieces of it, he'd known - the waiting was coming to an end, his life was coming to its new start.

Finding one's soulmate wasn't an exact science in terms of timeframe. Some found them at twenty, others at thirty but the fact remained, everyone found them. No one was ever left out of it. So Rick had never worried as his birthdays passed and he celebrated them without his soulmate by his side. He'd blown his candles and made the same wish each time, that it wouldn't come in too long a time.

It just so happened that the first day of scratching his collarbone and fighting ghost fragments of sea blue dream coloring his vision had been that of his thirty-second birthday. And Rick had smiled an intuitive little thing, not yet sure but damn well hoping that was going to be it. Then weeks passed and nothing could make him doubt it anymore. The more days passed, the closer he got to meeting the one man or woman who would be his forever.

 

King County consisted of a small station with his indoor drunk tank and two cells, mostly uninhabited.

There were about thirty cops at Sheriff Ford’s orders navigating various ranks and years of service and Rick, without being a rookie, was still a fairly young officer compared to the literal dinosaurs of the higher ranks. Most officers his age were already mated and with families of their own which meant that the annual Christmas selling of the King County police force calendar was a pretty well-oiled, routine business in terms of who would go where, to which section of the county and for how long.

Every year it was the same thing.

Every year, Rick got to go the farthest way for the longest shift of the station. He didn't complain, it wasn't like he didn't like the job and this was a pretty stress-free assignment, a matter of knocking on doors, selling people the ‘protect and serve’ talk and get out of there.

Most people were nice enough, some old ladies tried to give him biscuits in thanks for his service and if he wasn't careful, he could have to stay hours for tea and a conversation that reset every ten minutes. But yeah, Rick mostly met nice people on these calendar days.

Then there was the trailer park. Because of course no one else would be bold (stupid) enough to willingly go there with a police cruiser, let alone wander from creaky to dingy door with a uniform on their backs. But Rick still did it.  

The first year, as he walked back to find his patrol car completely tagged over after he'd just been copiously insulted by at least ten different people, he thought he'd never do it again but then, just as he entered the damaged car, a little boy approached him. He looked like he could be ten but it was hard to tell under the hoodie he was wearing like a cape.

The boy had looked up at Rick and smiled an innocent little thing, he hadn't said a word, just given Rick that one smile and left, disappearing between barbecues and motorcycles strewn across the grass.

Rick never saw him again, but he never forgot about that strange encounter, he never forgot him.

Getting out of the park was far easier than getting in ever was but for some reason, Rick never cared either way. After a while, people got used to seeing him pop up once a year and if they weren't remotely amicable with him, they didn't insult him as much as they used to and his car was mostly intact when he left.

Ever since that first time, ever since that boy with the blue eyes and black hoodie had smiled at him, Rick had felt connected to the trailer park, unconsciously convinced that a part of him belonged there somehow, as weird as it sounded, even to his own ears.

As he drove on the umpteenth occurrence of the calendar days, Rick smiled to himself. Somehow, he felt accomplished, happy, not exactly whole, not just yet, but satisfied still. He'd managed to sell a good proportion of his pile of calendars today and with a few more loops in the neighborhood of the park to spot any passing pedestrian, he could go home.

Driving had always been one of his favorite parts of the job and doing it so close to Christmas was a delight like no others. Even in the most secluded parts of the county, people had shown the holiday spirit was present and everything, from rooftops to bicycles could be adorned with red and green or gold and silver decorations.

Rick got lost sometimes. Well, not really lost, he had lived in this county his whole life but he allowed himself moments where he just drove, without a purpose or a mission in mind, following the wind and the lights ornamenting his surroundings.

Today was no exception.

He drove, and drove, turned and again until he found himself at the birth of the deepest woods of the area, trees getting thicker and more numerous by the mile-mark. He'd always known these woods where there, just a few miles away from his house, or from the school he'd been at but apart from that simple knowledge, Rick couldn't remember ever coming this close to them let alone entering them to explore whatever riches they may hold.

Today would be the day then.

Something unexplainable seemed to pull him in. As his foot pushed on the accelerator, Rick's hands started to tremble faintly. He shrugged his right shoulder, frowning a little as the ache he felt there grew stronger and stronger until it bordered on pain.

Rick's eyes widened a little when he saw a house, right at the end of the narrow dirt road he'd taken. The white paint peeling off the woodwork of the porch was an eerily poetic sight to behold and the flutter of his hands gained his heart.

It wasn't the first time he'd seen this house nor this circle of trees bathing the place in a green halo.

Rick got out of his car slowly, a smile forming on his lips, shy and unsure as he rubbed the base of his neck absentmindedly. He couldn't be sure but he would damn well find out.

Grabbing a few calendars as his pretext, Rick walked the path to the small house and rang the bell, his heart now pounding in his ears.

_“No way.”_

And Rick knew. The door had opened just as he made sure his shoes didn't look too dirty and his uniform wasn't too wrinkly and...and he'd looked up to find the bluest pair of eyes, round with surprise, the pinkest, thinnest pair of lips, round with shock. And it was all the stuff of his dreams right here, and not just any dreams. Rick was standing in front of his soulmate, he knew it, his heart knew it and the other man, gorgeous eyes and face and hair and shoulders and everything else, knew it just as well it seemed.

“This is going to sound weird but--” Rick started but the other man interrupted.

“I've seen ya in ma dreams.”

His voice was a delight of low, hot South honey to Rick's ears, his words a confirmation of what he already knew, what he'd acknowledged the second their eyes had met.

Rick nodded slow and smiled big, about to reply when the other man got way too white way too quick and moved to lean on the doorway in a much heavier fashion than anyone would, “Are you ok?” Rick’s voice came out in a rush, an insidious panic invading his veins as he saw the man waver on his feet.

He reacted on instinct, the other man did the same. Rick grabbed the first part of him he could reach, his right hand solidly circling the man's left forearm while his other hand went for the man's hip. The man grabbed Rick's shoulder, his thumb sliding over it and digging almost painfully into his right collarbone in an effort to support himself.

Grandma Grimes was right then, the marks where there for a reason: never forget the one place you touched your soulmate for the first time.

“Gotta lay you down.”

**Author's Note:**

> Also find me on [Tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/hogwartstoalexandria)


End file.
